William Raspberry:

As a friend remarked recently, time was when if you found it in the New York Times, that settled the bar bet and the other guy paid off. But if the Times and The Post or any other mainstream news outlet—including the major networks—come to be seen as the left-of-center counterparts of Fox News Channel, why would anyone accept them as authoritative sources of truth?

Jayson Blair, Mitch Albom, Barbara Stewart

What is at risk is not a reputation for infallibility; everyone knows that even the best newspapers and most careful broadcasters make mistakes. But it has been generally accepted that the mainstream media at least try to get it right—even when they too grudgingly acknowledge their errors after the fact.

Dan Rather, Mary Mapes

What worries me is that journalism could become a battlefield of warring biases: I’ll sock it to your guy, your party or your position on a public issue, and you’ll sock it to mine. And we’ll both believe we’ve done a good day’s work.

That’s funny, journalists like Sam Donaldson have described their job just this way.

Well, that was easy. But, forget all that. Is it possible that Raspberry just might be right. Has the conservative wing of the conservative party become so tightly wrapped in its cocoon that it can’t breathe anymore? Are Ann Coulter’s long (shapely) legs a devious plot to corrupt young liberal minds? I don’t know. What do you think?